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Tresada
“Tresada is cold and dark and it can be considered Hades for old ships that get taken there. Ships get hauled there to die, to be broken up, and scavenged for parts, but it’s also where they get reborn, recycled into brand spanking new parts of the Shemar fleet. It’s the afterlife for those same old ships.” “People who know I hail from Tresada ask me how I can live there; it’s dim, dark, and cold, cold, cold...not at all like the scenic living vistas of other inhabited worlds. Even the underwater settlements are dark and cold...even more so, since they’re sitting under miles of ice overhead that cuts off even the starlight. People figure that unless I’m a robot, that sort of environment would drive a NeShemar mad. I just tell ’em that it might be maddening for them, what with growing up on those green worlds or warm worlds, but me, I see things different. I want excitement? I can go watch the shipyards and the factories, or the warriors at practice. And there’s festivals; Awakening Day, Rites of Upgrade, Battle Honors, Ship Namings, hockey games, and the like; there’s ALWAYS something going on! I want scenic vistas, I step outside onto the surface and I’m on the edge of the whole harking galaxy! I can stand on the edge of eternity! And if I want pleasant quiet, away from the maddening crowd, I can go deep and go out beyond the settlement lights in the inner ocean, where the starlight doesn’t reach, and find all the quiet I need. It’s all beautiful; just different from what other people are used to. To me, though, it’s home.” ---Lamis D’Col Mareen, DarkWaters NeShemar Shipfitter and Tresada native. Tresada Dark Waters Node World Tresada is one of the Shemarrian Star Nation DarkWater Tribe’s few ‘node worlds’ where they’ve established a sizeable and permanent presence. History Tresada lies in a red dwarf desert system known to the rest of the Three Galaxies only by a call-code in Golgan star registries (Phai-07K-42r35684q Wolgrachi if one must be specific). The system was first scouted by the Golgans several centuries ago, but the desolate coldness of the system, its distance from any nearby habitable systems, and its closeness to the navigational hazard of the Briar Nebula discouraged follow-up study and exploitation in favor of better prospects. The system was stumbled across some centuries later by nomadic Shemar scouts looking for good resource worlds that were unlikely to be visited by anybody else. Description Tresada is the name given to the third planet in the desert system, though it would have been quite pleasant and livable if Tresada were closer to its primary and received more heat. The Earth-sized world has plenty of water on it, but in the form of an icy crust several dozen miles thick around the planet. Only some residual core volcanism and tidal stretching has allowed for a subterranean ocean of liquid water to exist, locked deep under a roof of ice. For the formerly coastal DarkWaters, this was too good to pass up and they petitioned the Tribal Congress to let them claim it as one of their Tribal holdings. As a result, Tresada is home to several types of settlements; orbital habitats, lunar habitats, surface communities, deep ice/rock tunnel townships, and underwater habitats either hanging from the underside of the ice layers or on the deep bottom of the ocean. Tresada’s many environs are home to a diversified community of EShemar, NeShemar, and Ne’R’Mar. Use Tresada is home base of the Deep Spiral Group (icon: a cutaway of a dark gold spiral nautilus shell with a star shining at its center), a major battle group and construction bureau for the DarkWaters. Tresada is their lab bench and factory floor, as well as their barracks and hangars. Many of Tresada’s moons have been converted into space stations, and several free flying orbital construction yards share orbit. These facilities service the various assembly and repair lines of the Shemarrian space forces. Besides new construction, Tresada’s yards collect ships from the Three Galaxies, accumulating them for salvage or conversion into auxiliaries. Parked in orbit or soft-landed on a moon with micro-gravity, the old ships and hulks await the evaluators and the salvagers, who again triage the vessels and pass judgment on their ultimate fates. What isn’t converted and repaired is cut up and melted down for scrap. Components such as cargo pods and modules, life support housings, and what not, are shelved on the moons to await reuse or quiet re-sale elsewhere in the Three Galaxies. The system is also a way station for cargo traveling between the various SSN communities. Orbital and lunar warehouses hold goods transiting to other Tribes, including finished ships and technology produced locally. The DarkWaters are careful to keep the exact coordinates and routing necessary to reach the Tresada system a secret of the Shemar, and only a handful of outsider merchants are even allowed to know about the system, let alone possess the navigational coordinates to reach it. Even the Shaemar use encrypted navigation codes when referring to the system. The same factors that kept Phai-07K-42r35684q Wolgrachi from being colonized by the Golgans have also kept the Shemar presence in the system a secret. The sensor-shrouding effects of the Briar Nebula between them and the more densely populated and traveled core regions have masked the industrial and gravitic spore of Shemarrian activities in the system, and the Shemarrians carefully watch travel in neighboring sectors. Of course, the same shrouding effects interfere with long range communications, so the Shemar have to carefully route and relay communications around the Nebula, which causes some unavoidable delays in hearing and replying to messages. Unusual/Special Features Rings Tresada has a wide and thin system of rings around it, the remains of several pulverized moons and other swept-up stellar debris Moons (12) Most of these are fairly small; under 300 km in diameter, but four are in the 700-2,000 km diameter range. Terrain Little of Tresada’s underlaying geography is visible through its icy covering. A few ‘islands’ (actually the tops of suboceanic mountains) peak up to the surface, often trailing ‘dirt tails’ of material that have been eroded off them by upper crustal glacial movement of the ice sheets. The ice crust itself is marked by flat plains from frozen upwellings or ancient asteroid impacts, and large long pressure ridges formed by the collision and refreezing of the ice. Tresada’s deep-ice oceans are one possible recommended tourism spot for anybody visiting the planet, and who wants to see more than construction. The massive under-ice inner oceans course through gigantic caverns and channels, heated to liquid state by residual volcanism and gravitic stress. The Darkwaters have populated several of the caverns with habitats, and many DarkMoons spend vacation and offtime exploring the deep oceans with the assistance of upgraded versions of their traditional amphibious WarMounts, such as the Ironback and SeaSword. Inhabitants Population 200 million (Roughly 65% EShemar, 30% NeShemar, 5% Shaemar/Shemra/ She-Mar/’Shemarrite’ races) Has a transient population of about 25,000 ‘others’ , non-Shemar who are allowed access to the system (as passengers without access to any navigational instruments). About 18,000 of the current transients are prisoners taken when their spacecraft/spacestation unexpectedly Rifted into the system and set off alarm bells all over the system. Despite the size of the spacecraft and its contingent of armed personnel, the (human) crew was apparently as surprised by their dislocation as the Shemar, and were quickly overwhelmed by responding DarkWater and Silvermoon forces. Post-action analysis showed that the majority of the crew aboard the ship were civilians, with a military crew in charge. Subsequent study of the situation showed that the high concentration of psychics in the civilian contingent triggered a psionic-Rift event that landed them in the laps of the Shemarrians. Wayfinder analysts have assured the Darkwaters that such an event is unlikely to happen again, but the nervous DarkWaters have destroyed the alien spacecraft anyway and stepped up their security measures in-system just in case. That still leaves them with all those humans; currently the Darkwaters have the majority of the prisoners in biostasis, stashed around the system, until such a time as they can figure a way how to dump them on a CCW or other neutral world, or make use of them on one of their own (like a Horrorwoods colonial enclave). Other Information Technology Advanced, easily equal to the mainstream Three Galaxies cultures. Particularly advanced in the area of robotics. Economy Industrial; the system’s main industries are robotics, ship-building, and research and development for the Shemar. Wealth Can be considered to be Rich. There is no significant unemployment to speak of, and the DarkWaters plow whatever profits they make from sales and exchanges with the other Tribes back into infrastructure, defense, and research. Government Can be considered to be a Hierarchy with Meritocracy elements. The Tribal Elders (War Goddesses and War Chiefs) are at the core of the government, with various levels of Psi-Shamanesses, Tinkers/Healers, Acolytes, and whatnot filling various roles in between. Law Level Secure. Lawlessness is rarely a problem among the EShemar/Shemar, aside from the occasional rowdiness, mentally unstable NeShemar (or visiting SkullCrusher), or outsider. Such problems are taken care of by Warrior patrols and the miscreants turned over to the appropriate parties (their Tribal Chiefs for discipline, the Healers for rehabilitation, or simply allowed to sleep off their over-enthusiasm). Popularity Fanatically Popular. The Shemarrian Star Nation is a young power on the rise, and thus enjoys the wholehearted support of its citizens. Stability Solid. Unless something really drastic were to happen to Shemar society, this is destined to become an Immortal regime. Notes There are typically at least three Scorpio and two Abyssal Dragon-class battleships in the system at any given time (twice that number under construction) and upwards of eighty smaller ship types on hand. There are at least twenty ships of other Tribes at given time at Tresada, there to get refitted or supplied, or pick up cargoes. These figures do not include the some fifty-plus ships (including seven Crescent-class cruisers) available to the Silvermoon enclave on Ananis. At least 60 million WarMounts of various types are also present in the system. Category:Darkwaters Category:Tresada Category:Planet Category:Advanced Cultural Notes Category:Enclave Category:Wolgrachi Category:Golgan Republic